Fishing and Bravery
by KuroKame
Summary: The Straw Hat Clan is on the way towards Grand Line, but Usopp is having second thoughts about joining the clan. Includes some spoilers from Kuro Arc and Arlong Arc [one shot, no pairings]


**Fishing and Bravery**

_**Author's Note:** I was stuck when writing on Imprisoned (again), so I started writing some random story set a few days after the Straw Hat Clan left Arlong's Park. It contains some spoilers from the Kuro Arc, and Arlong Arc. The dialogues are a bit long in places, but if you can put up with that, I'd be very happy. I also want to apologize in advance if I have brought the characters out of character._

_**Disclaimer:** How ever many times I wish to own One Piece and its awesome characters, it will never come true. I guess some wishes aren't meant to come true. But still, I could never make One Piece as great as Oda-sama, so it might be just as well that I don't own it.

* * *

_

The large full moon was the only light as far as the eye could see, not even the stars could be seen in the pitch black sky. The ocean was calmer than ever before; not even a wave disturbed the surface in which the caravel cast its dark reflection where she lay anchored.

Aboard the Going Merry, the door in the deck next to the main mast was opened very slowly and silently and a figure emerged from below deck. Unloading a large bag from his back, the man closed the door just as slowly and silently as he had opened it. He let his eyes sweep over the moonlit deck, sighing lightly. This was a hard decision, maybe the hardest decision he ever would have to take. But it had to be made. Maybe he had been wrong when he set out to sea; maybe he wasn't born to be a brave pirate after all.

Throwing the bag over one shoulder – and almost losing his balance by doing so – he walked across the deck towards the starboard railing where the raft was still tied to the ship. The raft he had been building as a platform for fishing and so that Luffy could join the rest of them when they decided to go swimming in the ocean, and also the raft that would take him home again. He let down the rope ladder and leaned against the railing with his eyes closed. Then, a deep voice made him jump and turn around.

"Going somewhere? Isn't it a bit early for midnight fishing? I'd think it's only a little past eleven or so…"

Looking up towards the upper deck, he could see the faint outline of a man sitting on the rail above the entrance to the lounge, holding an enormous dumbbell in one hand.

"Zoro…" he muttered, wondering how he could have missed seeing the man sitting there. "Go away."

"You should be glad that I'm keeping watch tonight instead of Luffy," the swordsman said calmly, moving the dumbbell to his left hand as easy as if it didn't weigh anything. "He wouldn't be happy to see you leaving like this, Usopp."

Dropping the large bag to the deck, the long-nosed man looked defiantly up at the swordsman.

"I guess not. But I've made up my mind, I don't belong here anyway."

"Why not?" The question was made with such a carefree tone that Usopp hardly registered it as a question.

"Because. I'm not of any use to you; I'm not strong or brave like the rest of you."

A metallic sound was heard as the swordsman put down the dumbbell on the upper deck behind him. The man then looked down at Usopp where he was standing on the moonlit deck next to the main mast.

"What the hell are you talking about? Sure, you're a coward sometimes, but aren't you underestimating yourself just a little bit?"

Usopp growled. He still remembered abandoning a tied-up Zoro to be caught by the mer-men outside Arlong's Park. Zoro couldn't have forgotten about that so soon.

"How about when you decided to protect your village against the pirates even after you were shot?" the swordsman asked.

Usopp's right hand moved up to the blue and white-striped wrist band he kept around his left wrist, covering the scars from being shot in the arm in his hometown.

"The only reason to why no one believed me was because of my stupid lies," he said, looking down at the wooden deck. "I couldn't let that damn butler just kill them because of his selfish greed, even if I had to sacrifice my own life to do so."

"And what about when you convinced those kids that you had just been lying about the pirates? Or when you told them to protect that girl instead of staying around and fight?"

"They're just kids. That was a real battle with real pirates, Zoro. Not just some fantasy or a game. Those pirates wouldn't have hesitated to kill them if they got the chance. What kind of captain would send his men to their deaths if there were other options?"

It looked like the swordsman shrugged, but through the shadows, it was hard to be certain.

"That butler would have, if I remember Nami's story correctly. Apparently, he would have killed his own men if Luffy hadn't stopped him."

Usopp looked up; images of the intimidating captain Kuro flashing through his mind. On the upper deck, the swordsman jumped down from the rail and landed as silent as a cat on the floor outside the lounge. He leaned against the rail outside the lounge for a moment before heading for the stairs on the portside and down to the lower deck.

"What about Arlong's Park then? I heard you took on one of the commanding officers among the mer-men, just like the cook and I did."

"Don't start with that, Zoro," Usopp muttered, clenching his fists. "I tricked him with my Ketchup Star, pretending to be dead. I was too scared to fight him."

"But you did fight him," Zoro said, now leaning his back against the mast right in front of Usopp.

"Of course I did!" Usopp said, almost forgetting to keep his voice down. "I couldn't have looked any of you in the eyes if I hadn't. And if I hadn't fought him, who knows what he could have done to the villagers or anyone else once he came back to Arlong's Park?"

Usopp could hear the smirk in Zoro's voice as the man replied.

"So you fought a mer-man, just because you didn't want him to hurt anyone else, even if you were scared to death? And you claim that you're not brave?"

"What do you mean?" Usopp asked, blinking in confusion. His teeth clacked together as the swordsman's fist struck down on top of his head. Rubbing his head, Usopp looked up at the green-haired man, whose face only showed mild irritation so far in the pale moonlight.

"You seriously don't realize that you've described your own greatest strength?" Zoro asked, folding his arms across his chest.

"My greatest strength?"

"Yeah. From what I've heard from you now, you'd do anything to protect the innocent and your beliefs, am I right?"

Usopp couldn't reply; he just nodded briefly as the point Zoro was trying to make started to slowly sink in.

"Just remember that you don't have to be brave all the time, as long as you can be brave when you have to." The swordsman pushed himself away from the mast and was about to go back to his training when he seemed to remember something and turned around.

"I think I know why he asked me to talk to you," he said, shaking his head lightly. "And I'm not sure if I should feel insulted or not…"

"Why is that? Wait… 'He'?"

"He knew that you'd be too dense to listen to his reasoning, so he told me to keep watch - just in case."

"He knew all along…" Usopp said, his hands falling powerless to his sides.

"Of course he did," Zoro said calmly, turning around to walk away again. "He always knows, whether you want him to or not. It's a Luffy-thing." The swordsman climbed the stairs up to the lounge, where he turned around and leaned against the rail.

"You can leave if you want, Usopp. I'm not going to stop you if you really want to leave, but you better tell him if you do, because there is nothing brave about sneaking away like this. If I'm not mistaken, he's probably still awake. You can go and tell him right now, or just ask him to go midnight fishing or something."

The swordsman climbed the rest of the stairs to the upper deck where he started working out again. Usopp looked down at the bag by his feet and smiled. He threw the bag into a corner before he pulled the door to the men's quarters open and poked his head into the room below.

"Hello? Anyone up for some midnight fishing?" He almost lost his balance as a pillow was thrown directly into his face.

"Shut up, I'm trying to sleep down here…" the newest crewmember muttered, turning around in his hammock. "If you want food tomorrow, you better close that door…"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm sorry. I was just asking. How about you, Luffy?"

"Okay!" came the cheerful answer from a man who clearly hadn't been sleeping at all.

Down in the dimly lit room, Usopp could see the shadow of the Captain reaching for his hat and swinging himself out of his hammock. A bit too late, Usopp noticed that the Captain had reached out his hands, grabbing hold of the edging of the hole in the deck. He didn't have the time to dodge as the rubber man rocketed himself up onto the deck, and was slammed into the railing on the portside. By the mast, the sound of the blond cook muttering curses over the noisy brats was broken off by the door to the men's quarters being slammed shut. Laughing, the Captain untangled himself and got up, looking overly excited as always. Usopp couldn't help but join in the laughter as he got up from the deck, rubbing a sore spot in his ribs.

"Wait here for a moment, I'll get the rods and the lantern," the long-nosed man told his Captain. "I finished the raft after we anchored this afternoon, so we can try it out if you want."

"Sounds good, hurry up!"

As Usopp walked into the storage room below the lounge to get the fishing rods and the small red lantern, he grabbed his bag on the way and threw it in a corner next to the box where he used to store his tools and the ingredients for his Stars. He could hear the Captain's voice from outside the room.

"Zoro, do you want to go fishing with us?"

"No. You go and have fun, but don't fall into the water. I don't want to have to jump in after you again."

The Captain laughed and promised not to fall into the water, at least not on purpose. Usopp smirked to himself and went through another barrel filled with different kinds of canned soup.

"Where are those rods?" he muttered. "We used them just two days ago… Hey, I've been looking for this!" He put the bottle of Tabasco aside, silently wondering why it had been jammed inside a box filled with old moth balls. Then he made a triumphant sound as he found the fishing rods and the lantern under an old bag that once had been filled with some kind of beans.

Later, when Usopp had tied the lantern securely to one of the corners of the raft and he and the Captain had settled down on the raft, Luffy lay down on his back, his eyes closed and the rod held loosely in one hand.

Usopp kept his eyes on the calm ocean, the fin of a shark breaking through the surface over by the horizon. That had to be a very large shark, he thought to himself, hoping that it wouldn't come towards the ship.

"Did you use to go fishing back on your island?" Luffy asked sleepily behind his back.

"Of course," Usopp replied cheerily. "I was known as Usopp, the King of Fishing. Once, I caught one of the Sea Kings, but I couldn't fit it into my little boat, so I released him. But then something amazing happened."

"What was that?" Luffy asked, not sounding sleepy anymore. Usopp tried his best to just keep his eyes on the horizon, as if he was telling the Captain about a memory.

"When I released the Sea King, he didn't swim away or tried to attack me. No, he reared up from the water and said 'Thank you for releasing me. For your kindness, I will grant you three wishes."

"Three wishes, huh?" Luffy said, sitting up and getting a firmer grip around the fishing rod in his hands, as if he hoped to catch a fish that could grant wishes at any moment. "I didn't know fishes could do that."

"Well, it's because he was a magic Sea King, and there aren't many of those out there these days."

"What did you wish for?"

Usopp thought for a while, pretending to work with a tangle on his line.

"I stood up in my boat and looked him straight in the eyes and said 'King of the ocean, I wish for adventures, to see places no one has ever seen before… and friends who would never let me down… Friends whom I would die for if it would save them from danger.' That's what I said. And the King answered 'Very well, all of this will be granted, but you must be patient, because my magic works over time.'"

"Why couldn't he make the wishes come true at once?"

Usopp shrugged lightly.

"Because if he had brought adventure and new places to me, the people on the islands would have been very angry because they would have to make new maps for the locations of their islands. And if he had sent me to the new places and the adventures, the people in my village would have starved because I wouldn't return with the fish I had already caught."

"Oh. I didn't think of that. Nami would have been angry, too, because of the new maps that had to be made."

By the silence that followed, it sounded as if the Captain had fallen asleep, but just as Usopp was about to turn around to make sure that the man wouldn't slip into the water, he heard Luffy's voice again.

"I don't know what I would wish for." He said slowly. "If I ever caught a magic fish, I wouldn't know what to wish for. I could wish that I would find the One Piece and that I'd get to see Shanks again, but that would make the adventure boring. If I knew for sure that I would reach the treasure, it wouldn't be as fun to sail around, fight and see new places."

Usopp chuckled and reeled in his line to throw it out a bit further.

"You could always wish for a never-ending supply of meat," he suggested.

"And rum," Zoro's voice echoed down from the railing where he was standing, looking down towards the raft.

"And a musician!" Luffy brightened up even more as he thought of this. At that moment, Usopp noticed the twitch in the Captain's fishing rod.

"Luffy! You've caught something!"

The next thing he knew, a huge fish jumped out of the water and dove back in, pulling the unsuspecting Captain off the raft and into the dark water. Both Usopp and Zoro called out the man's name, and Usopp was about to jump into the water after the Captain when Zoro called out for him.

"I'll get him; hold that lamp over the water so I can see something down there!"

And the swordsman jumped off the ship into the water. Usopp hurried to untie the lantern and held it out over the water. During over two minutes, his heart was racing and he fought the desire to dive into the water after the swordsman. Then, there was a huge splash as Zoro emerged from the water, throwing the drenched body of the Captain onto the raft where the black-haired man started coughing up the water he had swallowed and inhaled. The swordsman took a few deep breaths of air and looked at Usopp.

"I lost his hat down there. I need to go back and get it or he'll kill me when he wakes up!" he said, nodding towards the Captain. As the swordsman disappeared into the dark water again, Usopp held out the lantern over the surface again. By his side, the Captain was coughing up the last of the water in his lungs. He sat up quickly, grasping at his black hair.

"My hat!"

"Don't worry! Zoro is down in the water and getting it for you." Usopp said, gesturing for the Captain to calm down. "Um… You caught a magic fish, don't you remember?"

Luffy frowned as he looked at Usopp. The long-nosed man continued, not wanting to stop talking once he had the Captain's attention.

"Yeah, and it was a really powerful one, too. You set it free to get your three wishes – you really don't remember it? Of course, when your wishes were granted, and the magic fish dove back into the water, it made such a splash that it accidentally knocked you off the raft. But Zoro dove in after you, just like I ordered him to do."

"What did I wish for?" Luffy asked tiredly, still holding his hand on top of his head.

"What you wished for? A never-ending supply of meat – and rum, since Zoro insisted on that – and that you would never lose your hat. The fish said that the food and rum would come to you over time, but he would make sure that you never ever lost your hat."

When Luffy seemed to have calmed down a bit, Zoro came back to the surface, gasping for air. He pulled himself up on the raft, sat down cross-legged next to Luffy and pushed the soaking wet hat onto the Captain's head.

"Here's your crown, King of Pirates," he said, taking deep breaths while looking at the Captain. "I thought I told you not to fall into the water."

Laughing as he patted the straw hat, Luffy apologized to Zoro, even though he didn't seem to be all too sorry over the past events. Zoro muttered something and began climbing up the rope ladder, water dripping from his clothes as he swung himself over the railing onto the deck, where Nami was standing with her arms folded across her chest.

"Can't you keep quiet? I can hear you down in my room."

Watching the Captain rocket himself off the raft and up to the deck, Usopp sighed and started to reeling in the line of his rod. Then he grabbed the still lit lantern and began climbing up the ladder. Up on the deck, the whole crew had gathered. Sanji was apparently annoyed because they had disturbed Nami's and his own beauty sleep, and after sending Luffy and Usopp flying into the wall outside the weapon storage room at the prow of the ship (Zoro had seen the cook's sweeping kick coming and had only stumbled back slightly as he blocked it), the blond man went into the lounge to start preparing the food for the day, slamming the door shut behind him.

Silently mourning his broken fishing rod for a moment, Usopp rubbed his left shoulder and looked out over the ocean, the weight of the Captain holding him from getting to his feet. The sky was still pitch black, but the large moon lit up everything around them with its silvery glow. It would be a fine day tomorrow, and if Nami was right, they would reach the Grand Line in only two more days. A sandal-clad foot suddenly knocked his head back against the wall as it collided with his chin, and the long-nosed man cursed while struggling to get the laughing and apologizing Captain off himself.

When Usopp was climbing down to the men's quarters a few minutes later, his attention was drawn towards the upper deck where Zoro was working out again, still in his wet clothes.

"Oi, Usopp. I thought of something," the swordsman said, with ease lifting the enormous dumbbell up to his chin.

"What's that?"

"You should be glad that you're scared sometimes. Keeps you sane. You have to be insane to be unafraid all the time."

"Like you and Luffy?" Usopp said with a smile. Zoro laughed where he sat on the rail on the upper deck.

"Exactly. Now go and get some sleep, if there's any adventure asking for you, I'll make sure to wake you."

"Thanks, Zoro," Usopp said, climbing down along the mast into the room below deck.

When he had climbed into his hammock below deck, Usopp lay still for a moment, listening to the sounds around him; the slow snoring of the Captain who was sleeping in his hammock; the soft splash from a lonely wave crashing into the side of the ship and the vague tapping of the cook's footsteps up in the lounge.

Thinking about it, he couldn't imagine a better place to be at. And to think he had meant to leave this ship only a little more than an hour ago, what could he possibly have been thinking?

Clasping his hands behind his head, Usopp finally fell asleep, dreaming of magic Sea Kings and wishes coming true.

End.

* * *

_Note: Feel free to review this story, I bounce with joy every timeI get a review. ... I'll give you cookies. -holds out a plate of cookies-_


End file.
